Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women

h) Services Tribunal Act.

103. These laws are non-discriminatory. Special and fairly generous provisions in the relevant laws exist for maternity leave etc. A woman generally cannot also be posted away from her husband.

104. There are 22 tiers or levels of Government Service. These are called Basic Pay Scales (BPS). The lowest is BPS-I (janitors etc.) and the highest is BPS-22 (Secretaries, such as Foreign Secretary, Secretary Interior etc.).

105. The Establishment Division is the Government entity relating to civil service matters. Its mandate includes a) regulation of all matters of general applicability to various occupational groups in public service including b) Recruitment c) conduct and discipline d) terms and conditions service.

Women in Government Service⁹

103. 
     The National Commission on the Status of Women commissioned an inquiry report in 2001 on the status of women employment in public sector organizations.
     
104. 
     Some salient features and recommendations of the study are given below.
     

Table 7.08 Women in Government Service.
Basic Pay Scale	Total number of employees	Male	Female	%age of female employees
All scales (BPS 1-22)	175,189	165,802	9,387	5.4
Officers Category (16-22)	21,872	19,974	1,898	8.7
Other category (1-15)	153,317	145,828	7,489	4.9
Census of Government Servants 1993 as quoted in the Inquiry Report of the National Commission on the Status of Women on status of women employment in Pakistan December 2003.

103. 
     The above table shows that representation of women in government service is very low. The disparity between men and women is present both in quantitative and qualitative terms. There are many factors responsible for this state of affairs. A larger percentage of women are illiterate compared to men. Government service entails a certain degree of mobility with postings and transfers to different areas of the country or the province. Some women find this inconvenient. Many departments do not seem to have taken the Government quota seriously probably because follow-up measures were weak and departments were not made accountable to reach quota targets within a definite time period.
     
104. 
     There are some indications that the proportion of women is gradually increasing in the government service such as the fact that about a third of officers recommended for promotions by the Sind Public Service Commission in 2002 were women. Similarly data relating to the CSS examination shows that despite the absence of a quota in this examination, women are making progress. In 1997 women made up 11% of the successful candidates. In 2001 this percentage had risen to 18%.
     

     TABLE 7.09 PERFORMANCE OF CANDIDATES FOR THE LAST FIVE YEARS IN COMPETITIVE EXAMINATIONS (1997-2001)
     CandidateS	1997		1998		1999		2000		2001
     	M	F	M	F	M	F	M	F	M	F
     Appeared	2498 (89)	295 (11)	2174 (89)	260 (11)	2480 (87)	380 (13)	4119 (88)	550 (12)	2271 (85)	404 (15)
     Finally Qualified	445 (87)	65 (13)	464 (88)	62 (12)	386 (86)	61 (14)	783 (87)	117 (13)	602 (83)	123 (17)
     Selected	186 (89)	24 (11)	185 (86)	29 (14)	205 (87)	30 (13)	177 (86)	29 (14)	131 (82)	28 (18)
     Source: Federal Public Service Commission (2003). Figures in parenthesis are percentages